


memories fade

by chadsuke



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-07
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:14:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25761937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chadsuke/pseuds/chadsuke
Summary: shizune is late to see her old friend.
Relationships: Nohara Rin/Shizune
Comments: 2
Kudos: 17
Collections: why im sleep deprived 💖✨





	memories fade

she doesn’t remember it like it was yesterday - she thinks people who say that have never actually lost someone, or who have obsessed over the memories so much that there is never actually existing in the presence. (there are some memories she thinks are like that for tsunade, but she hopes they have healed, that the edges have been blunted over time.)

it’s an old memory, faded and cracked, but parts of it still remain. a smile, a laugh - a hug that was probably warm, a tight squeeze that made her breath catch in her throat.

“you better come back to visit!” rin had said, grinning - or something along those lines, something similar. “don’t forget about me!”

shizune had never returned - she hadn’t returned in the five years she had had before rin passed (and she hadn’t known, then - she hadn’t known until years later, when the hokage had tried to track tsunade down and she had asked kakashi, the anbu sent after her).

“kakashi,” she had asked, because she knew of him even if she didn’t know him. “how is... how’s rin doing?”

kakashi looked at her, his visible eye filled with the weight of years. “dead,” he had said. “five years ago.”

for five years, she hadn’t known. rin was dead and shizune had lived her life and thought of her friends on occasion, her friends from ten years ago. five years shizune could have visited, could have seen her. five years she had been dead and buried and shizune hadn’t known at all.

shizune presses her hand to the memorial stone. her uncle is on this stone - her parents are, as well. their loss is old, still painful but like a dull knife scraped over her skin - she saw them add these names. she knows them intimately, has touched them so many times even if it hasn’t been for years.

she’s never traced obito’s, though - never ran her fingers over uchiha obito’s name, tho it feels worn, and she thinks of kakashi. her fingers drift downwards, and there is rin’s name. nohara rin.

rin has been dead for thirteen years - she was fourteen when she died. she’s almost been dead as long as she was alive and that’s a sobering thought.

shizune loved her, back then. or liked her a lot - she was nine. what did she know of love? and shizune can’t conceive of her in the same way, now. shizune is twenty-seven years old, and the last memory she has of rin is of her at nine, grinning wildly, or the picture kakashi showed her, of her thirteen and smiling before obito was ripped from both of them.

it has been eighteen years since shizune laid eyes upon her - two-thirds of her entire life. but that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t feel the ache, doesn’t feel the scrape along the inside of her throat, the glass shattering aching and cold.

“sorry it took me so long, rin,” shizune apologizes, words achingly soft. “but don’t worry. i haven’t forgotten you yet.”

she does not plan to.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!! as always, you can find me on tumblr at my writing blog **ftcoye** , where i take drabble prompts, or at my personal **chadsuke**.


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